RCom strengthens rural foray in the country

Reliance Communications (RCom) has launched an array of initiatives aimed at increasing mobile telecom and Internet penetration across rural India, including a high-speed wireless Internet service.

The Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group company is expecting these to help it increase revenues from rural operations to 15-20 per cent (of the total revenues), compared with the present 8-9 per cent. RCom has earmarked a capex of around Rs 1,000 crore per year for its rural foray.

“The Indian telecom wireless rural subscriber base is now over 125 million. The next wave of telecom growth is emerging from rural India. With the rural base expected to double in the next few years, RCom is looking at tapping the potential of this exponential growth through innovative and ground-breaking service offerings and tariffs,” RCom President (Wireless) S P Shukla said.

Under the rural drive, RCom is expecting to reach out to over 500,000 villages in the current financial year itself. The company will drive Internet penetration by launching its ‘BharatNet’, high-speed wireless Internet service, across 20,000 rural locations. The company is offering Internet access on a sachet pricing of Rs 98 per week, with downloads of up to 350 MB.

Another initiative is the company’s ‘GrameenVAS’, wherein it will cater to the specific needs of rural mobile consumers in over 500,000 Indian villages. These include offering ‘Mandi Bhav’ (market prices of commodities), agriculture and animal husbandry updates, weather forecast, local information and ‘Samachar’ (news) among others in multiple Indian Languages. The services are priced at Rs 15 per month.

RCom will also provide mobile applications that aid automation, surveillance, remote monitoring and data gathering under its machine-to-machine programme. These include automation of agro and irrigation services, water level monitoring and data gathering for milk and agri-cooperatives, fisheries, poultry and soil analysis.